05/17/2005

Stonyfield Farm "got" talking to customers long before the internet and long before blogs. In the good ole days, back in 1983, when the company was milking cows, they use to write "Let's hear from you" on the back of yogurt lids. Flash forward to 2004 and this innovative organization is still creating emotional ties with customers but this time through the World Wide Web and with the talents of Chief Blogger, Christine Halvorson. Yes, dear divas there is such a title as chief blogger and if you're very lucky you may one day hold it too.

We are the
world’s largest producer of organic yogurt and began business in 1983 with “7
cows and a good yogurt recipe.” Today we produce something like 18
million cups of yogurt a month, and have a staff of about 280 people working in
our Londonderry, New Hampshire plant. That’s not to mention the
many organic family farmers who supply us with milk and, of course, the cows.

Why
Stonyfield Farm is Blogging

Our CE-Yo
(yes, that’s what we call him) Gary Hirshberg really saw the potential for
blogging as a way to continue to stay connected to our very loyal consumer base
as we grow and grow. He has referred to blogging as “a handshake with the
customer” and really wants us to be real and authentic in our blogs. After he
saw the success of blogging as used in presidential campaigns, he took the idea
by the horns and hired Christine Halvorson as Chief Blogger. But---here’s the catch---she didn’t
just do one blog, she started in April 2004 with 5!

Baby BabbleA daily web log, or blog,
where parents can meet up, rant, offer and seek advice, or just tell us their
trials and triumphs.

Well, we
really aren’t seeing it as a marketing tool, per se. We continue to do
the usual things: We have four e-newsletters. We have a great and very popular
web site. We do promotions and contests. We talk about the blogs in some
of those other tools, and vice versa. In the Strong Women Daily News
and Creating Healthy Kids blogs, we occasionally talk about two p.r.
initiatives we have—Strong Women Summits about women’s health and “Menu for
Change”, a program that seeks to rid public schools of junk food! All
along, it’s kind of an experiment—the blogging—and we so far see it as
worthwhile. Our customers are relating to us in a unique and different way now.

Selling-in
To Management

See the
above comment. I give Gary a lot of credit for seeing the potential of blogging
and how it could apply to his business. I think he would say that he
talked the rest of his management team into the idea—he says they hadn’t even
“heard” of blogging before he brought it up—and he worked to allay their
fears. There were concerns with maintaining a consistent company voice
but, really, it only came down to worrying about giving away proprietary information.
Other than that, we haven’t bogged down the blogs with a lot of rules or
restrictions, and the company has really embraced them.

How
Stonyfield Farm is Marketing Its Blogs

As
mentioned above, we do talk about them in our e-newsletters. We have had some
banner ads running now and then on affiliated sites, to pique people’s interest
and get them to click through. We sent out press releases when we first
launched the blogs back in April 2004 and I hope people are using our RSS feeds
to stay in touch with us once they do come to visit.

Does Stonyfield Farm have a Specific Strategy For Each Blog?

Not really.
We have specific topics we try to stick to in each one—though we often stray
from the cow path, if you’ll pardon the expression—and we keep an eye on each
of the blogs. If one becomes less-visited or we can’t keep up with it,
we’ll probably drop it and do something else. The Bovine Bugle, the blog
of ours written entirely by one of the organic dairy farmers who supplies us
with milk, is very popular. Readers love it. I’ve also now enlisted the help of
five or six Stonyfield employees who are the parents of very young
children—ages 3 or less—to write for our Baby Babble blog. With the help
of these folks, the blogs are becoming very popular and I think our readers
find them fun and entertaining.

Lessons
Learned

1) Have
something to say! Don’t do it because everybody’s doing it and you feel you
have to.

Stonyfield Farm has a particular point of view about the world—we are
about nothing less than changing the world in terms of responsible
environmental practices, educating business and individuals about those
practices, and supporting sustainable agriculture. That gives us lots to
talk about and lots to have opinions about! And that makes for good blogging
material. If your company is boring, skittish, or just not that
interesting, don’t do it!

2) Once
you’ve decided to blog, go for it with all four hooves. Set your parameters and
then go!

Future Directions

I think our
blogs will be fluid—some may come, some may go, and they’ll morph into
something we can’t even imagine today. This technology is changing and society
is changing around it. Who knows what it all may mean just a year from now?

Christine
Halvorson On Blogs

I’m just an
English major with a great job. I tell folks I have the best job in the country
with one of the best companies in the country. And I’m not just saying
that. Get paid to blog? Who knew?!

05/16/2005

Is RSS the next killer app? And if so how will marketers utilize the technology? Sally Falkow has introduced an interesting new service/product call PRESSFeed,

It allows marketing and PR people to upload the content they generate to their
website without having to learn any technical skills or wait for the IT
department to do it for them - and then syndicate their news content in an RSS
feed.

05/15/2005

Dahlings, this Diva had the distinct pleasure of dishin' blogs with some of our industry's true blog pundits:
Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Debbie Weil, Steve Rubel, Shel Israel and BL Ochman. The teleconference was sponsored by MarketingProfs and moderated by my pal Stephan Spencer, who kindly let play with the the big kids on the block.

05/14/2005

Finally! One of the first pieces of research on customers' perceptions about marketing/business blogs and the influence these types of blogs can have on the brand/company! Study was conducted by the German agency CRM agency Proximity. Congrats! for beginning this process.

Sidebar: Please keep in mind this is a German-based study; we don't know if cultural differences would impact findings.

91% of the blog readers expect a fast and appropriate reaction to questions and comments in enterprise blogs. Okay U.S. research firms - your turn at bat!

90% think it's important to make a clear difference between commercial and non-commercial content.

Of the blog readers, 54% form their opinions about products/companies on the basis of blogs.

51% of the blog readers visit product and/or corporate sites as a results of reading blogs.

58% of the blog readers, read them to find news and information they can't find otherwise.

57% of them are interested in the personal opinions of the authors, but only 43% are interested in the discussions.

05/14/2005

Take a look at what happens to a blog that doesn't have comments opened, but one where it seems people REALLY want to comment on. Or could it be that some geek just has too much time on her or his hands? Guess it doesn't matter, the concept is out there now .... you better just open comments on your own or someone will do it for you!

By the way, the blog is the new Huffington Post; and one of its bloggers, Ze Frank,is encouraging his colleagues to throw caution to the winds and open comments. Perhaps they'll even include trackbacks. Oh, and developing RSS feeds for each blogger would be nice too.

05/13/2005

Today's Friday Fun combines marketing with macho play. Yeah it's sort of on the sexist side, but hey - it's Friday the 13th! Marketing Divas and Divos, what would you do you if you wanted to capture the 18-24 year old male market?

That's the challenge Unilever had developing strategy for Axe, a deodorant body spray targeted to young dudes. In a web-based reality TV spin-off, Garth and Evan, attempt to learn about women's desires. Axe has given the guys $25k to write The Book on seduction...since seduction is a game where the rules are always changing and no one has the play book.

The website boasts of a video blog, an animated play book - which I admit is great fun, postcards, boards, journals (not a blog) and photos of our dudes on their adventures.

It's a fun, creative project that def goes way out side of the box. I must admit I did spend more than a couple of minutes on the site. Hmmm...wonder if the next product is a line-extension for women. Unilever, if you give me $25k, I'm sure I could write The Book on seduction from the perspective of what turns men on from a women's perspective. I'd even throw in a couple of blog posts! (Of course, I'd disclose, think I want to get flamed by those pundits? <gg>)

Sidebar: Wonder why Unilever isn't linking the site from its product page?

05/11/2005

Huffington Post, a new blog that launched this week, is adding another wrinkle to the blogosphere. Huffington Post combines news stories, gossip tidbits and 300 celeb sort of...kinda bloggers. I found it interesting that the news stories have open comments but the 300 celeb sort of...kinda bloggers' comments are closed. On TDavid's post about Huff Post PSoTD called it a People's Magazine blog.

Sidebar: Thoughts to ponder.... What is the difference between a blogger and a columnist or a newsletter writer? Are these worlds merging? Is it the format? The frequency? Comments on? Is there such a thing as a "blogger" anymore? Does it really matter and does anyone really care?

05/10/2005

About Monster Worldwide, Inc.Did you know that one of the largest online recruitment websites has its roots in a small yellow pages ad sale company? Monster.com has changed the way people look for jobs and how companies look for people. Today this online recruitment business services millions of job seekers in 20 local language sites.

Monster.com surely didn't need to start a blog to increase search rankings or visibility. As Dan Miller, VP Content, explained to me, the Content team wanted to provide value-added information to their users. Couple that with the vision of Andrew McKelvey, Chairman and CEO, and his belief in the employees and you've got the makings of a monster blog (ouch! sorry about that one).

We are a company that never settles, embraces change, does what it says, and does it fairly and with great passion. Andrew McKelvey

Monster entered the blogosphere in December, 2003. We created a blog geared toward job seekers to help them find their way through the rigors of the job-search process.

Job seekers have been using our Career Advice area since Monster's inception to improve their job search and their work lives. We empower them with useful information, innovative services and supportive communities.

The blog complements this approach by letting individuals who work on the Content team comment on events of the day and issues that affect people looking for work. We are here to help. We are here to help people advance their lives. We are here to help job seekers create their future.

How Blogs Fit Into Monster's Marketing Strategy

They don't. The Monster blog was never part of the marketing strategy.

The blog was created by the Content team as a way to personalize the work we've been doing since Monster began offering career advice. We're not trying to actively promote Monster. We recognize the inherent viral marketing the blog will create, but there was no marketing plan, no meeting with the marketing folks for buy-in, no "project plan."

Yes, we're delighted for the traffic that comes to the blog, but traffic has never been an issue for Monster. We've been one of the top 20 visited Web sites in the world for for a while now.

What we like about the blog is that it's always been kind of "underground" here at Monster, flying below the radar. Senior management is aware of it, but they've been gracious to just let us do our thing. There is no heavy-handed editorial control.

The Content team is comprised of professional writers and editors, and we're not writing or saying anything that's out of the realm of Monster's mission -- to bring people together to advance their lives. The blog helps us do this, in a very cool, grassroots kind of way.

Blog Design Strategy

I had been using Typepad for my (Dan Miller) personal blog and it's easy to manage, so I recommended we use it for the Monster blog. The design is simple. It was important to use Monster colors, and we worked with our Creative team to make sure we got them just right. Of course it was important to add "Trump," who lives in the upper left-hand corner of the page.

We link to other career-type blogs on the left and include links to our best content on the right. Information about resumes, interviewing and salary is important to job seekers on the Monster Web site, so we felt it was important to include these links on the blog.

Search Optimization Strategy

We understand the power of blogs. We understand how writing about certain issues with good key words will give the blog strong visibility in search engine results. While the core Monster Web site performs well through search, the blog is complementary content to raise awareness.

Selling-in To Management

This wasn't a much of an issue. I went to a blogging conference in Boston back in June '03 and came back invigorated with the possibilities. I immediately put together a presentation for my manager focusing on blogs as a complementary way for Monster to extend its brand to an audience that might not be using Monster.

Shortly thereafter, I met with our Legal department to see if they had any issues with us starting a blog and got the OK. I was asked to add some legal documentation (similar to what we use on message boards), and we were ready to go.

I think it's been an evolving education here as not everyone is familiar with blogging and what this really means for Monster. Lots of blogging questions come to me and I'm happy to answer them. My message to everyone back in 2003 was that this was something we needed to do. Monster has always been cutting edge and creating a blog for job seekers made perfect sense, and still does. I think senior management likes the fact that we're part of the blogosphere.

How Is Monster Marketing Its Blog?

We are not doing any active marketing for the blog. Somehow, an active marketing campaign for the blog doesn't feel right. The spirit of blogging is that what you're writing about is good enough and important enough that people will find you. Hopefully we're writing something that resonates with someone, they'll read it, perhaps comment and pass the link along.

If we're lucky, people will think the Monster blog has valuable information and they'll link to us. That's how we'll build traffic. Our audience will decide whether or not we're good enough. Yes, we have a link on our Career Advice home page and we sometimes feature the blog in our newsletters. Our moderators on our message boards may sometimes point job seekers to a relevant post, but we are not doing any traditional marketing. We're here, like everyone else. If you find us and like us, great.

Lessons Learned

We knew from the outset that we didn't want to come across sounding corporate, even though the blog is an extension of a very successful company. So we've always tried to have a real, down-to-earth, passionate voice in our writing. This has played well for us.

We have five different content producers who contribute to the blog, and each producer writes whatever they feel like writing. What's touched them today? What did they hear on the news or read about that they may want to comment on? How does what we're writing about help someone looking for work?

Because we've low-keyed our approach, I get the sense that our audience respects us. Some large media outlets have had nice things to say about us. We feel like we "get it," and that we're enveloping the spirit and passion of what makes blogging such a phenomenon. You can't force it. There's no editorial calendar and there's no agenda. The reason we're blogging is to help people by offering our personal insight in a cutting-edge community that grows bigger every day.

Dan Miller On Blogs

As a student of communications, I have been fascinated with blogs as a medium that blurs the line between traditional media and this new art form. While blogs can be done badly (and should be recognized as such), each person is allowed to be their own publisher. Blogging is a way to circumvent gatekeeping.

Blogging mirrors Marshall McLuhan's philosophy in 1967 that technology would remove the barriers of time and space. Everyone has an opinion and they now have a place to share those opinions. The companies that get this right will be the companies that recognize that blogging is not a forum to issue press releases and company news.

If a company blogs, it needs to recognize the hip culture of which it is taking part, and that the audience will see right through a planned, structured message. A corporate blog should mirror a company's philosophy, but it needs to be done in a way that is respectful of this unique grassroots, viral culture. A company that understands this will have an easier time being accepted as a corporate blog entrant.